Pluviosa Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
pluviosamods) wrote2023-10-12 04:15 pm
pluviosamods) wrote2023-10-12 04:15 pm
SETTING
SETTING
Pluviosa is set upon an overgrown, wandering ship - once a luxury vessel, uncountable years have turned it into something else. A vibrantly rotting husk, some might say - others, a veritable ark of life. On eight mechanical legs, it chases the horizon at a steady but hardly smooth gait, creating a feeling not unlike being on a much smaller ship on a stormy sea. If you close your eyes and focus on the motion, you can almost fool yourself into believing that the ship is on the waves.
Almost, but not quite. The scent of salt, the sounds of waves and seabirds - these are missing. Instead, there is a distant mechanical sound (or not so distant, if you are on one of the lower decks close to the place where the legs attach to either side of the hull) and the scent of vegetation, both fresh and rotting.
Because aboard the ship is a jungle of violet and green, plants clinging to life and fighting for sun, sinking their roots deep into the layers of mildew and the remains of their predecessors. Topside, massive trees reach towards the sky at the mid and aft of the ship; within, vines dangle down into a gap between the port and starboard sides of the ship that once allowed natural light to reach the decks far below. And even within the halls, where the sun does not reach and where the ship's artificial lights have not shown for a very long time, tangles of roots and growths of glowing ferns, mushrooms, and lichen refuse to cede their hard-won territory.
The frame of the ship underneath is sturdy, but other than the outer hull, water damage over the centuries has created limitless small (and some not so small) leaks and gaps. The floor has warped and even outright collapsed in a few places. While the technology level of the ship was once quite high - probably around a hundred years ahead of modern Earth as a baseline, not fully into the space-opera/cyberpunk zone but advanced enough that there's a distinct gap between the two - almost all of it is nonfunctional due to age and disrepair. Gaps in the walls and ceiling contain visible cables and wires in addition to pipes and support beams, which usually don't spark when the power is on, but only usually. A lot of the technology that does function is an engineer's dream-or-nightmare of patched-together wires and components.
As a general guide to the structure of the ship, the real world cruise ship Icon of the Seas was used by mods as a reference in the brainstorming stages. Although it is no perfect match, players can find maps of this ship here to use as general reference if they so desire.
Based on the buttons on the elevators, there are a total of nineteen levels to the ship - four residential levels (which do not run the full length of the ship and can only be accessed via the back elevator/stairs; see the Housing page for further details), two top decks (deck R0 and 0), and thirteen lower decks. Numbers count upwards in the residential decks (R1-R4) and downwards on the main decks (1-13). There is a structure on the forward half of the topdeck which contains an open lower lounge and a sealed-off upper area.
The two top decks of the ship are functionally a single unit, as the upper deck (R0) is primarily a series of balcony and catwalk spaces that wrap around the edge of the ship with a view either out over the lower decks or out beyond the ship. The lower topdeck (deck 0) was once the pool deck, and it does still technically fulfill this function - that is to say, there are still pools on board the deck, full of water and varying degrees of water plants. But the true defining feature of the two decks is that, being the only ones truly open to the sky, they're the place where the tallest plants growth and flourish - to call them the "open decks" would be a misnomer because when you stand on them, the sky is still often out of sight, just blocked by tree branches instead of the floors of the ship. Not every deck-dimension is covered in enough trees to block out the light, but even the clearest decks have some level of Growth here, where light from the sun and water from the rain are both abundant.
Down the center of the ship - from the "top" deck down to deck 9, though visibility looking down to the bottom is frequently blocked by plants on overgrown decks - runs an open-air division that once allowed natural light to pour down into the depths of the ship.. Many of the inner suites have balconies that open out into the space, and there are various bridges that span over the gap between the two halves of the decks - at the one-third mark from aft to fore on all decks (stacked beneath the residential floors), the two-thirds mark on the topdecks and deck 5, and the halfway point of deck 7. The true bottom of this crevasse is the floor of deck 9, and this currently serves as the limit to character access; decks 10-13 are fully enclosed and only accessible via the stairs and elevators (when they're accessible at all).
The first deck below the open air spaces above is primarily home to what were once passenger suites, and the suites on this level are in far better repair than those on the levels below. Going downward means following the path of water from rain and other inclement water through the ship, as well as whatever leaks have happened over the last few centuries. The decks closer to the bottom are thus in progressively poorer condition; while the upper decks can probably be brought up to a livable state (even those beyond the residential suites the Ship has actively cleaned out for characters in the rear overcarriage), the decks below the halfway mark are likely beyond any hope of salvation, at least on the wetter decks where mold and mildew have been allowed to grow wildly.
Accordingly, there are only a handful of areas in the lower decks that are in decent condition, and most of them are related to the ship's functionality. The insides of elevator shafts are clear enough for the rise and fall of the lifts; the engines that power the ship's ground-eating pace are kept free of not only plants, but also rust, mold, and befouled oil. Those engines are where the ship has focused the majority of its energy, to continue its unceasing journey. They block off large parts of the ship on decks 5 and 6; the machinery of where the legs attach is sealed off in four paired banks on either side of the ship that take up roughly half of the "suite" space altogether. Currently, the Ship does not permit access to these areas.
Aside from these engine spaces, the majority of the ship is seemingly residential suites that have been converted for various purposes; many of them are empty of the furniture that would have once graced them during the ship's days as a leisure vessel, though the fixtures are usually still intact. There are a number of dining areas and a small section that was clearly once retail giftshops. Additionally, there is a large amphitheatre near the rear of the ship, which hosts a panoramic view out the back and a decaying stage, and the remains of water slides can be found criss-crossing the ship in loops descending from the middle of the upper decks to the bottom, letting out on deck 9.
In reality, there are multiple, interconnected versions of "the ship" - overlapping extradimensional spaces, if you will, each of which has a different climate profile and a different set of plants that calls it home. These environments can be accessed through the elevators only - using the stairs will just keep you within the same instance of the ship.
In order to access a given floor in a given environment, characters must push two buttons. First the button for the deck number they wish to go to, followed by the deck name (which is written on additional signage beside the number as that environment is unlocked, eg R4 Apple or 1 Fern). Only environments that are available will light up as an option for second press - unavailable floors will go dark. If a second button is not pressed, then after a moment the elevator will take the character to the corresponding floor in their current environment. Because of this system, characters can not have elevators stop on multiple floors on a single trip. They'll have to wait for the first stop to be completed before inputting the second, even if those stops are within the same environment.
The ship's decks, from top to bottom -
R4 - Apple
R3 - Tomato
R2 - Wheat
R1 - Cocoa (labeled, but inaccessible)
[This is an additional space that does not have a corresponding floor and is only apparent if taking the stairs or timing the elevators. It is the upper half of the double-height atrium/cafeteria on R0]
R0
0
1 - Fern
2-9 [These floors are as yet unlabeled]
10 - Zinnia (Restricted)
11-13 [These floors are as yet unlabeled]
The residential floor environments (ie, decks R1-4, regardless of what dimensional deck) are detailed on the Housing page. Details on the other decks follows below.
Further down, the former suite rooms are instead devoted to the growth of mushrooms - and there are a truly astonishing number of them. Nothing terrifyingly toxic is intentionally cultivated here, though that doesn't mean that mutants and mishaps don't exist - without guidance from the Ship itself or a mushroom expert, you should be careful about what you decide to eat, especially if it looks different from the rest of what's in the room. The mushrooms are in turn fed on waste product from the other food-producing floors, so there is a constant stink of vegetable compost and rotting fruit here at the bottom, which also serves to attract plenty of flies.
Because, yes, there are flies. And spiders, and bees - several committed suites of bees, in fact, which are usually labelled on the doors as BEE ROOM and can be opened to face a wall of wax and dripping honey. Although these insects are generally not antagonistic to the Ship's various carts, they can get aggressive if disturbed - the bees in particular.
Aside from the insects and the possibility of eating a bad mushroom, the biggest danger on Apple is opening a blackberry suite and having a bunch of brambles spill out into the hallway in search of light and space to grow (and, accordingly, trapping anyone nearby in their thorns). Although the food decks are generally better-managed than most of the other decks, they are still subject to the influence of the Growth occasionally.
All three food decks are in roughly the same condition so far as the functionality of the Ship, which has drones zipping through them for harvesting, watering, and other forms of garden maintenance at all hours. Accordingly, passageways are clear, water faucets function, and lights are on in most of the suites in order to provide the plants enough light to grow properly. There is evidence that these decks were once very ordered and cared for, with faded labels on many of the doors and many of the plants having long overgrown containers, but the passage of time has introduced plenty of chaos to them.
However, passengers can't remain for long on these decks, as the very fabric of space within them is somewhat unstable. Characters will feel a growing migraine at around the two hour mark that is in full swing at around three hours, with a little bit of individual variation, that will eventually grow substantial enough to cause them to pass out if they try to power through it. The Ship itself suffers no ill effects from this, nor do the various pollinating insects that dip back and forth across these floors, apparently through cracks in the dimensional space. These gaps are visible to characters like heat-haze distortions (though like the heat haze, never actually close enough to touch); glimpses of other floors are occasionally visible through them.
The sheer variety of vegetables cannot be overstated. An entire floor - some hundred or so individual suites - is devoted just to beans. Another is almost entirely squash, zucchini, and pumpkins. Lettuce, tomatoes, cabbage, every mutant member of the mustard family that has ever existed, peas and peanuts - all of these have their homes on Tomato Deck. About the only "vegetable" that can't be found here is corn (which is at home with the other grains on Wheat). Insects buzz over freely from Apple through little dimensional rifts, though there are a few places where bees have decided to make their hives regardless of anyone's original intentions about it.
There is a small section here that is devoted not to the growing of food plants, but the processing of them. The floors occupied by the Ship's walking engines are also home to a variety of food processing equipment, including fermentation equipment for the production of soy sauce and tofu. Indeed, food from other decks also comes through this middle section of Tomato - the smell of fresh-roasted coffee beans is constant in the aft section, where chunks of the water slides have been taken down and converted to giant drums for the process of shelling both coffee beans and the various kinds of nuts.
The floors closer to the bottom are home to various kinds of root vegetables - potatoes in a full rainbow of colors, radishes and carrots, garlic and onions, everything that needs a substantial depth of soil to grow is down below the ship's centerline. These aren't the only things below the centerline, however, as this region of the ship seems to have particularly high ghostly activity, and visitors will frequently half-hear voices debating the merits of various allocations of vegetables, the soil quality, how many days a human can eat zucchini in a row before they die, and so on - fragments of a mundane farming life that disappears back into nothing if you try to track it down.
All three food decks are in roughly the same condition so far as the functionality of the Ship, which has drones zipping through them for harvesting, watering, and other forms of garden maintenance at all hours. Accordingly, passageways are clear, water faucets function, and lights are on in most of the suites in order to provide the plants enough light to grow properly. There is evidence that these decks were once very ordered and cared for, with faded labels on many of the doors and many of the plants having long overgrown containers, but the passage of time has introduced plenty of chaos to them.
However, passengers can't remain for long on these decks, as the very fabric of space within them is somewhat unstable. Characters will feel a growing migraine at around the two hour mark that is in full swing at around three hours, with a little bit of individual variation, that will eventually grow substantial enough to cause them to pass out if they try to power through it. The Ship itself suffers no ill effects from this, nor do the various pollinating insects that dip back and forth across these floors, apparently through cracks in the dimensional space. These gaps are visible to characters like heat-haze distortions (though like the heat haze, never actually close enough to touch); glimpses of other floors are occasionally visible through them.
Hidden in the corn maze, the pools have been converted to rice paddies - indeed, deck 9 is similarly occupied entirely by rice, the natural flooding used in a controlled manner to support the growth of various varieties of the grain. There is more rice in the suites, along with barley, quinoa, amaranth, and the wheat that gives the deck its name. Opening a door on Wheat isn't nearly as full of surprises as on Apple or Tomato - for the most part, massive blocks of the same crop are grouped together, with holes punched intentionally in the walls between rooms to allow insects the ability to come and go. When you open a door here, you're most likely to be faced with some kind of excessively tall grass, in some stage of growth between sprouting and harvest.
Much of that grain gets dumped down the former waterslides, now used as chutes to get the grain down to the milling apparatus that fills Deck 8, just above the lower rice paddy. Here the various kinds of grain are hulled and ground into flour that's actually useful for feeding people, and the excess is carted away to in turn feed the mushrooms back on Apple. The only other notable feature is that the amphitheatre at the back of the ship is also full of corn - this time, the sweet corn that you actually can eat off the ear if you so desire. Just take care not to get lost back there.
All three food decks are in roughly the same condition so far as the functionality of the Ship, which has drones zipping through them for harvesting, watering, and other forms of garden maintenance at all hours. Accordingly, passageways are clear, water faucets function, and lights are on in most of the suites in order to provide the plants enough light to grow properly. There is evidence that these decks were once very ordered and cared for, with faded labels on many of the doors and many of the plants having long overgrown containers, but the passage of time has introduced plenty of chaos to them.
However, passengers can't remain for long on these decks, as the very fabric of space within them is somewhat unstable. Characters will feel a growing migraine at around the two hour mark that is in full swing at around three hours, with a little bit of individual variation, that will eventually grow substantial enough to cause them to pass out if they try to power through it. The Ship itself suffers no ill effects from this, nor do the various pollinating insects that dip back and forth across these floors, apparently through cracks in the dimensional space. These gaps are visible to characters like heat-haze distortions (though like the heat haze, never actually close enough to touch); glimpses of other floors are occasionally visible through them.
It seems like the Ship might have a good reason for keeping it closed off.
Inside of the ship is functionally a jungle, damp and full of moss, mold, and mildew. Anywhere there is light, and even some places there isn't, massive plants have grown out of control, some of them large enough to have caused structural damage between rooms or floors. Beneath the canopy are various smaller species - small maples (some of them outright ornamental in size and shape), nettles, holly, and salal at mid height and various mosses and lichen along with the rare treasure of trillium and deer-tongue lilies at the bottom. Ivy climbs up to hang from ceilings and strangle whatever comes within its reach (sometimes literally). And there's ferns.
The further down you go, the more of it is just ferns.
There are more varieties of fern here than you've ever seen in your life (unless you're some kind of hyperspecialized fern researcher), and their fronds are hypnotic to look at. Literally - spend too long looking at any particular one and you're likely to get sucked in, trying to follow the natural form of the fractal to its end with your eyes until the rest of the world may as well not exist. But as long as you don't look at the deep ferns too closely (many of the ones in the upper levels are fine), they're not especially dangerous.
What's that? Oh, there's still strangling ivy on the ceiling? Well, then. That's no good at all.
Aside from the risk of getting strangled by the ivy because you stared at them too long, the ferns also just... move. Their fronds are only rarely motionless - most often, they rustle like a breeze only they can feel is flowing through the halls. On rare occasions, you may see something that's more like a large invisible shape attempting to carve a path through the fractal undergrowth. But that's probably nothing to worry about.
Aside from its thick plant cover, Fern Deck is one of the most dimensionally stable of the decks, and typically the deck on which characters arrive. The systems of the Ship, however, are only partially functional on this deck; in particular, much of the deck is not lit, due to the addition of artificial lighting causing explosive growth among the plants there.
In comparison to other floors characters have had access to so far, Zinnia is sterile and cold, both literally and figuratively. For the first time, characters will see the Ship with no signs of plant growth - even Zinnia's top decks are free of vegetation. Instead, these upper decks are full of complicated-looking instruments that stick up from the deck, measuring the wind and other atmospheric data, and the large square blocks of air conditioning and refrigeration heat sinks. There is evidence of wear from the centuries of rain and storms, and some of the weather instruments have pieces broken off, but there is nothing organic to be found up here.
Below the top deck, the floors between 1 and 10 are all much the same - chilly, dimly lit, and almost supernaturally clean. The smell of cleaning chemicals lingers in the nose, along with the smell of preservatives, and the energy matches. Characters with empathy powers will find it difficult to get comfortable on sterile Zinnia, with an almost oppressive unwelcoming feeling and a much stronger feeling of grief and failure than the rest of the Ship. The halls themselves are dark, except for lights that turn on in the immediate area of characters and follow them around as they move through the halls. All the doors through the hallways are sealed closed, and though they open at the approach of any character, it's with a wave of cold air from the chilled interior.
The inside of the suites on Zinnia no longer at all resemble their original purpose as vacation lodging - all furnishings and most interior walls have been removed, and although the doors at the far end of the suites with balconies still exist, they're covered and sealed such that not even light can get through them. This much is obvious, because any given suite on Zinnia will remain completely dark until you actually step inside, at which point low, cold white lights will kick in, just enough to see clearly once your eyes have adjusted.
Every suite on Zinnia is filled with rows and rows of shelves, containing rows and rows of carefully maintained samples in test tubes and similar containers. The labels are frequently faded to the point of illegibility, but the samples contained in the tubes are clear enough: insects, small animals, feathers, more insects, entire small birds, fur scraps and teeth, and other tissue samples from larger animals fill rows and rows and rows of the ship's halls, in almost uncountable quantities. Both wet and dry preservation methods are used, and though there are no individual specimens larger than about a fist, it's clear that the researchers who once worked and lived aboard the ship were as thorough as they possibly could be with the time they were given.
After all, any specimen they failed to acquire, any that they did not preserve properly, was destined to disappear entirely.
Specimens appear to be ordered based upon environment - as indicated by the large painted signage on the walls on every floor, which includes a floor number and the name of a plant used as an indicative descriptor. 01 Fern will of course be familiar to the Ship's current passengers, but the tantalizing hints implied by floors such as 08 Orchid (full of tropical birds, insects, and other rainforest animals), 02 Pine (full of plain-colored and white creatures that seem to have inhabited Arctic or other extremely cold climates), or 09 Yucca (full of small and sharp desert animals) are there for those who keep their eyes peeled while investigating this dimension's decks.
The clean state of Zinnia also allows characters access to something they have yet to see - the three bottom floors of the ship, which on both Fern and the agricultural decks are full of plant debris and flood damage. Descending the elevators to these floors will offer characters access to more converted suites on decks 11 and 12, their windows and balconies once more sealed off, but deck 13 is open.
Indeed. deck 13 is very open. There are no walls on this deck - which is smaller than the main decks, tucked back towards the back of the ship, like the opposite of the residential floors above. Only sterile furnishings separate characters from the view from the glass walls that surround this deck, and even patches of the floor are large glass panels, allowing you to look directly down at the ground below.
When the ship was flying regularly, it must have been quite the attraction. Unfortunately, as it is now, the view out these windows is only a slightly closer view of the now-familiar wasteland beyond the ship, interrupted by the motion of the eight metal legs that now propel it. Looking down through the floor view panels provides characters with no breathtaking views of the distant ground, but only the blurry sight of the ground rushing by as the Ship continues its endless mission.
Rue deck is restricted access at all times. Characters cannot access this deck unless specifically noted in event or other mod posts; the Ship will not respond to requests to access this deck. In addition, Rue is a clean deck; there is no evidence of the Growth here.
Indeed, there is very little evidence of life on Rue at all, and it is very well-polished in addition to being clean. The floors are shiny enough to be reflective, even with the dim lighting (the lights are only rarely on at full power on Rue), but they're hardly the shiniest thing around. All of the mirrors missing from the other decks - the ones you don't find in bathrooms and so forth - are here, and then some. Sometimes entire walls are mirrors, the way you would find in a dance studio, and a good portion of the hard furniture is also mirrored surfaces. Good luck making your way around Rue's equivalent of a cafeteria without getting vertigo or bonking into anything.
Many of the mirrors, though hardly all, have plain white bedsheets thrown over them, though unfortunately there's little to be done when it comes to the mirrors that are literally walls. This is due to the hazard of Rue: That your reflection, possibly warped, possibly a you of the past or future, but despite everything still you, will step out of a mirror and attempt to drag you back where it came from.
Or at least, that's what happened the last time characters were on this deck, and that's why it's restricted access. Indeed, the Ship has not even added Rue to the list of options available marked on the elevator, so characters have, at present, no idea which number even corresponds to it.
Characters are confined to the ship - while there are areas "outside" the ship that are accessible, such as cabin balconies and the upper decks, all of these areas are insulated from the outside by a sort of bubble of an unknown material. The bubble is flexible and just shy of transparent, letting in light and allowing a mostly clear, though slightly white-tinted view of what lies beyond the ship. It responds to attempts to break it reflectively - physical attacks cause the bubble to bounce back as much force as it was struck with, and anything else bounces back as though reflected by a mirror. Gentle touch, however, can manipulate the shape of the bubble; its texture is vaguely like attempting to push downwards on particularly thick jello. (It's basically like this.)
Despite this, those standing on balconies or the upper decks will feel the wind through their hair, the bubble only reducing the force of the wind to a light breeze. The bubble partially protects characters from precipitation - rain and snowfall are lessened compared to the outside, but you'll still get soaked through if you go out in a rainstorm and frosty if you go out in a snowstorm. (You might not want to try your luck with lightning.) Some storms will have particular effects on specific areas of the ship, which will be detailed in information posts at that time.
Outside the ship, the scenery is harsh. Terming this wasteland a desert would imply a wider variety of life than exists beyond its borders. Though there are snow-capped mountains visible at times in the distance, and storms are at least somewhat likely to drop water over the ship, the only point of life is what the ship is carrying. There is no green - or the purple common to the ship's mutant plantlife - within sight; the whole stretch of the horizon is in reddish browns in the day and darkened shapes of blue-black in the night.
Usually, the areas the ship passes through are dry and heaped with dunes of sand and dust, speckled with cliffsides and stone worn smooth by the sandstorms. Occasionally, there is a crevasse that the ship must ford its way across - at the bottoms of these, the ripples of rivers can be seen, where they have long since worn their way to the bottom. Equally uncommon are lakes that glitter in the sun, with no apparent source to fill them. Neither body of water, however, shows the slightest hint of being an oasis in this empty world.
The skies over the ship tend to remain clear outside of the storms that come rolling through seemingly at random - there are few clouds except those that hang low over the mountains, and the ones that can be seen are scattered and only rarely block out the sun to any degree. At night, the stars are visible to an extent that characters who grew up with light pollution will be in awe of; although the ship has a few running lights, all of them are reddish and point downwards to avoid interfering with the view. A hoop of galactic river circles the planet at about a 40 degree angle to the path of the sun.
There are no familiar constellations visible at night; all characters who are familiar with the skies of their homes will find themselves equally at a loss to recognize anything. Those who are familiar with stellar navigation in general will be able to place that the ship is in the northern equatorial region, the circling-point of the stars low in the northern sky as it travels generally eastward. Beyond this, however, characters will find it difficult to make a comprehensible study of the heavens, as many of the stars move from night to night. Perhaps those are not stars at all, but planets or satellites reflecting sunlight?
Most obvious in the night sky, however, is the moon. Although it was at one time similar to the moon of Earth and many other planets, at some point in relatively recent geologic history, something massive impacted it on one side. Debris circles the moon, primarily on the side with the crater, which is visible at an angle from the surface of the planet below. Like Earth's moon, it is tidally locked, and only shows one face to the planet, with the crater on the waning-light left side, but there is some amount of wobble to its axis as it spins that causes it to appear at different angles over its phase period (longer than Earth's moon at 37 days), the north pole pointing anywhere from 12 to 3 o'clock and back again.
Characters usually have free rein to explore the ship, outside of certain areas that are sealed off for ship functions. However, due to the potential danger, going into the deeper sections of below-decks can require preparation, both in-character and out-of-character, so that the mods can adequately prepare information on what your characters find in the course of their explorations. In order to keep the number of these explorations workable for the mod team, we ask that players limit themselves to one active exploration at a time (per players) and three concurrent explorations total across the game.
Accordingly, if your characters are intending to go belowdecks, please fill out this form as a response to this post with the location in the comment header so that mods can give you the results of that exploration in a timely manner. Some explorations may not be fully played out due to sheer volume and mod time constraints, but we will do our best to get you at least an idea of what your characters find. A summary of the exploration's outcome will be posted in response to your comment when the exploration is either complete or has dragged out without real progress for more than two weeks.
PLEASE NOTE: Characters can die as a result of their investigations, especially in the more dangerous parts of the ship. They may also be injured, exposed to Growth and Whispering effects, or piss off the Ship in the process of their Exploration. However, Explorations are also one major method for getting information about the metaplot and the ability to eventually get out of here, and they can also provide characters with ample rewards of supplies that the Ship does not provide - including items from characters' home worlds.
Almost, but not quite. The scent of salt, the sounds of waves and seabirds - these are missing. Instead, there is a distant mechanical sound (or not so distant, if you are on one of the lower decks close to the place where the legs attach to either side of the hull) and the scent of vegetation, both fresh and rotting.
Because aboard the ship is a jungle of violet and green, plants clinging to life and fighting for sun, sinking their roots deep into the layers of mildew and the remains of their predecessors. Topside, massive trees reach towards the sky at the mid and aft of the ship; within, vines dangle down into a gap between the port and starboard sides of the ship that once allowed natural light to reach the decks far below. And even within the halls, where the sun does not reach and where the ship's artificial lights have not shown for a very long time, tangles of roots and growths of glowing ferns, mushrooms, and lichen refuse to cede their hard-won territory.
The frame of the ship underneath is sturdy, but other than the outer hull, water damage over the centuries has created limitless small (and some not so small) leaks and gaps. The floor has warped and even outright collapsed in a few places. While the technology level of the ship was once quite high - probably around a hundred years ahead of modern Earth as a baseline, not fully into the space-opera/cyberpunk zone but advanced enough that there's a distinct gap between the two - almost all of it is nonfunctional due to age and disrepair. Gaps in the walls and ceiling contain visible cables and wires in addition to pipes and support beams, which usually don't spark when the power is on, but only usually. A lot of the technology that does function is an engineer's dream-or-nightmare of patched-together wires and components.
As a general guide to the structure of the ship, the real world cruise ship Icon of the Seas was used by mods as a reference in the brainstorming stages. Although it is no perfect match, players can find maps of this ship here to use as general reference if they so desire.
SHIP INTERIOR
Based on the buttons on the elevators, there are a total of nineteen levels to the ship - four residential levels (which do not run the full length of the ship and can only be accessed via the back elevator/stairs; see the Housing page for further details), two top decks (deck R0 and 0), and thirteen lower decks. Numbers count upwards in the residential decks (R1-R4) and downwards on the main decks (1-13). There is a structure on the forward half of the topdeck which contains an open lower lounge and a sealed-off upper area.
The two top decks of the ship are functionally a single unit, as the upper deck (R0) is primarily a series of balcony and catwalk spaces that wrap around the edge of the ship with a view either out over the lower decks or out beyond the ship. The lower topdeck (deck 0) was once the pool deck, and it does still technically fulfill this function - that is to say, there are still pools on board the deck, full of water and varying degrees of water plants. But the true defining feature of the two decks is that, being the only ones truly open to the sky, they're the place where the tallest plants growth and flourish - to call them the "open decks" would be a misnomer because when you stand on them, the sky is still often out of sight, just blocked by tree branches instead of the floors of the ship. Not every deck-dimension is covered in enough trees to block out the light, but even the clearest decks have some level of Growth here, where light from the sun and water from the rain are both abundant.
Down the center of the ship - from the "top" deck down to deck 9, though visibility looking down to the bottom is frequently blocked by plants on overgrown decks - runs an open-air division that once allowed natural light to pour down into the depths of the ship.. Many of the inner suites have balconies that open out into the space, and there are various bridges that span over the gap between the two halves of the decks - at the one-third mark from aft to fore on all decks (stacked beneath the residential floors), the two-thirds mark on the topdecks and deck 5, and the halfway point of deck 7. The true bottom of this crevasse is the floor of deck 9, and this currently serves as the limit to character access; decks 10-13 are fully enclosed and only accessible via the stairs and elevators (when they're accessible at all).
The first deck below the open air spaces above is primarily home to what were once passenger suites, and the suites on this level are in far better repair than those on the levels below. Going downward means following the path of water from rain and other inclement water through the ship, as well as whatever leaks have happened over the last few centuries. The decks closer to the bottom are thus in progressively poorer condition; while the upper decks can probably be brought up to a livable state (even those beyond the residential suites the Ship has actively cleaned out for characters in the rear overcarriage), the decks below the halfway mark are likely beyond any hope of salvation, at least on the wetter decks where mold and mildew have been allowed to grow wildly.
Accordingly, there are only a handful of areas in the lower decks that are in decent condition, and most of them are related to the ship's functionality. The insides of elevator shafts are clear enough for the rise and fall of the lifts; the engines that power the ship's ground-eating pace are kept free of not only plants, but also rust, mold, and befouled oil. Those engines are where the ship has focused the majority of its energy, to continue its unceasing journey. They block off large parts of the ship on decks 5 and 6; the machinery of where the legs attach is sealed off in four paired banks on either side of the ship that take up roughly half of the "suite" space altogether. Currently, the Ship does not permit access to these areas.
Aside from these engine spaces, the majority of the ship is seemingly residential suites that have been converted for various purposes; many of them are empty of the furniture that would have once graced them during the ship's days as a leisure vessel, though the fixtures are usually still intact. There are a number of dining areas and a small section that was clearly once retail giftshops. Additionally, there is a large amphitheatre near the rear of the ship, which hosts a panoramic view out the back and a decaying stage, and the remains of water slides can be found criss-crossing the ship in loops descending from the middle of the upper decks to the bottom, letting out on deck 9.
OTHER INTERESTING THINGS
- Characters do not have access to the mechanical rooms at the point of attachment for each leg on floors 6 and 7. These rooms replace roughly half of the suites on these two floors at regular intervals for the ship's four pairs of legs, and are clearly a later addition, as they do not match the rest of the construction.
- Similarly, characters do not have access to the old engine rooms at the back of the ship (from deck 7 downwards beyond deck 9). If you go to the rear of the ship and look directly downwards, you can see a small portion of them, which doesn't look like any kind of familiar boat engine.
- Finally, the sealed space overlooking the prow of the ship on the top deck. This space is lifted above a glass-enclosed lounge similar to the one on the residential decks. There is no elevator access to this area, only stairways that are sealed at the top. The ship's bubble does not presently allow characters access to the relaxation deck that is forward of this structure - probably to protect characters from the wind.
- As noted above, decks 10-13 are currently inaccessible. The elevator does not descend to these floors, and all stairways are flooded starting at approximately knee-level above the landing of Deck 9. From the smell of the water, it's been like that for a long time.
- Public restrooms can be found occasionally throughout the ship (usually near the elevators), and there are individual toilets and showers still in most of the suites in the lower decks. However, the only ones guaranteed to be functional are the ones near the cafeteria on deck R0.
- There are no mirrors to be found anywhere on the ship - not even the shards of broken ones. Other reflective surfaces, and mirrors brought in by PCs, don't seem to have anything strange going on unless otherwise noted.
- There are insects aplenty on board the ship, but there do not presently seem to be any other kinds of animals - not even rats. The insects are approximately what characters would expect from the ship's environment, except that the mosquitos - if there are any - don't seem to have any interest in biting characters.
THE MYRIAD DECKS
In reality, there are multiple, interconnected versions of "the ship" - overlapping extradimensional spaces, if you will, each of which has a different climate profile and a different set of plants that calls it home. These environments can be accessed through the elevators only - using the stairs will just keep you within the same instance of the ship.
In order to access a given floor in a given environment, characters must push two buttons. First the button for the deck number they wish to go to, followed by the deck name (which is written on additional signage beside the number as that environment is unlocked, eg R4 Apple or 1 Fern). Only environments that are available will light up as an option for second press - unavailable floors will go dark. If a second button is not pressed, then after a moment the elevator will take the character to the corresponding floor in their current environment. Because of this system, characters can not have elevators stop on multiple floors on a single trip. They'll have to wait for the first stop to be completed before inputting the second, even if those stops are within the same environment.
The ship's decks, from top to bottom -
R4 - Apple
R3 - Tomato
R2 - Wheat
R1 - Cocoa (labeled, but inaccessible)
[This is an additional space that does not have a corresponding floor and is only apparent if taking the stairs or timing the elevators. It is the upper half of the double-height atrium/cafeteria on R0]
R0
0
1 - Fern
2-9 [These floors are as yet unlabeled]
10 - Zinnia (Restricted)
11-13 [These floors are as yet unlabeled]
The residential floor environments (ie, decks R1-4, regardless of what dimensional deck) are detailed on the Housing page. Details on the other decks follows below.
DECK R4 - APPLE
One of several decks committed to the growth of food - specifically, fruit and mushrooms. The topdeck is a functional if neglected orchard, except for the swimming pools, which have been converted into cranberry bogs. The next few levels are devoted to various other kinds of fruit production, with individual suites filled with various kinds of berry bushes and dwarf trees, as well as a few kind of nuts. Even roses - grown for their rose hips - have a handful of rooms devoted to their cultivation. The levels on which the ship's engines sit are devoted to herbs of various varieties, both flavor and medicinal.Further down, the former suite rooms are instead devoted to the growth of mushrooms - and there are a truly astonishing number of them. Nothing terrifyingly toxic is intentionally cultivated here, though that doesn't mean that mutants and mishaps don't exist - without guidance from the Ship itself or a mushroom expert, you should be careful about what you decide to eat, especially if it looks different from the rest of what's in the room. The mushrooms are in turn fed on waste product from the other food-producing floors, so there is a constant stink of vegetable compost and rotting fruit here at the bottom, which also serves to attract plenty of flies.
Because, yes, there are flies. And spiders, and bees - several committed suites of bees, in fact, which are usually labelled on the doors as BEE ROOM and can be opened to face a wall of wax and dripping honey. Although these insects are generally not antagonistic to the Ship's various carts, they can get aggressive if disturbed - the bees in particular.
Aside from the insects and the possibility of eating a bad mushroom, the biggest danger on Apple is opening a blackberry suite and having a bunch of brambles spill out into the hallway in search of light and space to grow (and, accordingly, trapping anyone nearby in their thorns). Although the food decks are generally better-managed than most of the other decks, they are still subject to the influence of the Growth occasionally.
All three food decks are in roughly the same condition so far as the functionality of the Ship, which has drones zipping through them for harvesting, watering, and other forms of garden maintenance at all hours. Accordingly, passageways are clear, water faucets function, and lights are on in most of the suites in order to provide the plants enough light to grow properly. There is evidence that these decks were once very ordered and cared for, with faded labels on many of the doors and many of the plants having long overgrown containers, but the passage of time has introduced plenty of chaos to them.
However, passengers can't remain for long on these decks, as the very fabric of space within them is somewhat unstable. Characters will feel a growing migraine at around the two hour mark that is in full swing at around three hours, with a little bit of individual variation, that will eventually grow substantial enough to cause them to pass out if they try to power through it. The Ship itself suffers no ill effects from this, nor do the various pollinating insects that dip back and forth across these floors, apparently through cracks in the dimensional space. These gaps are visible to characters like heat-haze distortions (though like the heat haze, never actually close enough to touch); glimpses of other floors are occasionally visible through them.
DECK R3 - TOMATO
Despite whatever nitpicks one may have with the choice of name, the contents of this floor are clear enough - aside from the very upper level, it is filled entirely with a wide variety of vegetables. (The open-air decks host, in addition to pools converted to ponds for lotus roots and seeds, tall nut-bearing trees such as walnuts, almonds, and pecans.)The sheer variety of vegetables cannot be overstated. An entire floor - some hundred or so individual suites - is devoted just to beans. Another is almost entirely squash, zucchini, and pumpkins. Lettuce, tomatoes, cabbage, every mutant member of the mustard family that has ever existed, peas and peanuts - all of these have their homes on Tomato Deck. About the only "vegetable" that can't be found here is corn (which is at home with the other grains on Wheat). Insects buzz over freely from Apple through little dimensional rifts, though there are a few places where bees have decided to make their hives regardless of anyone's original intentions about it.
There is a small section here that is devoted not to the growing of food plants, but the processing of them. The floors occupied by the Ship's walking engines are also home to a variety of food processing equipment, including fermentation equipment for the production of soy sauce and tofu. Indeed, food from other decks also comes through this middle section of Tomato - the smell of fresh-roasted coffee beans is constant in the aft section, where chunks of the water slides have been taken down and converted to giant drums for the process of shelling both coffee beans and the various kinds of nuts.
The floors closer to the bottom are home to various kinds of root vegetables - potatoes in a full rainbow of colors, radishes and carrots, garlic and onions, everything that needs a substantial depth of soil to grow is down below the ship's centerline. These aren't the only things below the centerline, however, as this region of the ship seems to have particularly high ghostly activity, and visitors will frequently half-hear voices debating the merits of various allocations of vegetables, the soil quality, how many days a human can eat zucchini in a row before they die, and so on - fragments of a mundane farming life that disappears back into nothing if you try to track it down.
All three food decks are in roughly the same condition so far as the functionality of the Ship, which has drones zipping through them for harvesting, watering, and other forms of garden maintenance at all hours. Accordingly, passageways are clear, water faucets function, and lights are on in most of the suites in order to provide the plants enough light to grow properly. There is evidence that these decks were once very ordered and cared for, with faded labels on many of the doors and many of the plants having long overgrown containers, but the passage of time has introduced plenty of chaos to them.
However, passengers can't remain for long on these decks, as the very fabric of space within them is somewhat unstable. Characters will feel a growing migraine at around the two hour mark that is in full swing at around three hours, with a little bit of individual variation, that will eventually grow substantial enough to cause them to pass out if they try to power through it. The Ship itself suffers no ill effects from this, nor do the various pollinating insects that dip back and forth across these floors, apparently through cracks in the dimensional space. These gaps are visible to characters like heat-haze distortions (though like the heat haze, never actually close enough to touch); glimpses of other floors are occasionally visible through them.
DECK R2 - WHEAT
The sole member of the quartet of food decks that isn't topped by some kind of trees reaching for the sky - Wheat instead opens with a maze of maize, the corn the tallest thing anywhere in the dimension. Indeed, this corn is particularly tall, reaching fifteen feet high instead of the usual eight, and with an unusually ample number of ears to match. This top deck is entirely grain corn, tough and gritty to chew through before it's ground, and a number of varieties have hybridized over time, their pollen blown around by the wind.Hidden in the corn maze, the pools have been converted to rice paddies - indeed, deck 9 is similarly occupied entirely by rice, the natural flooding used in a controlled manner to support the growth of various varieties of the grain. There is more rice in the suites, along with barley, quinoa, amaranth, and the wheat that gives the deck its name. Opening a door on Wheat isn't nearly as full of surprises as on Apple or Tomato - for the most part, massive blocks of the same crop are grouped together, with holes punched intentionally in the walls between rooms to allow insects the ability to come and go. When you open a door here, you're most likely to be faced with some kind of excessively tall grass, in some stage of growth between sprouting and harvest.
Much of that grain gets dumped down the former waterslides, now used as chutes to get the grain down to the milling apparatus that fills Deck 8, just above the lower rice paddy. Here the various kinds of grain are hulled and ground into flour that's actually useful for feeding people, and the excess is carted away to in turn feed the mushrooms back on Apple. The only other notable feature is that the amphitheatre at the back of the ship is also full of corn - this time, the sweet corn that you actually can eat off the ear if you so desire. Just take care not to get lost back there.
All three food decks are in roughly the same condition so far as the functionality of the Ship, which has drones zipping through them for harvesting, watering, and other forms of garden maintenance at all hours. Accordingly, passageways are clear, water faucets function, and lights are on in most of the suites in order to provide the plants enough light to grow properly. There is evidence that these decks were once very ordered and cared for, with faded labels on many of the doors and many of the plants having long overgrown containers, but the passage of time has introduced plenty of chaos to them.
However, passengers can't remain for long on these decks, as the very fabric of space within them is somewhat unstable. Characters will feel a growing migraine at around the two hour mark that is in full swing at around three hours, with a little bit of individual variation, that will eventually grow substantial enough to cause them to pass out if they try to power through it. The Ship itself suffers no ill effects from this, nor do the various pollinating insects that dip back and forth across these floors, apparently through cracks in the dimensional space. These gaps are visible to characters like heat-haze distortions (though like the heat haze, never actually close enough to touch); glimpses of other floors are occasionally visible through them.
DECK R1 - COCOA
Although this deck is not accessible to characters currently, it's easy enough to guess what it hosts as crops. Olives (both in full and as oil), coconuts, cocoa beans (as both coffee and chocolate), and tropical fruits all appear in the food offered by the cafeteria at various times, and they aren't visible growing on any of the other floors... Well, except through the gaps caused by the spatial distortions. And if you were to actually sit down and take statistics on what's visible through those gaps, it would become apparent that looking at the other three from any given deck, the division is something like 60/20/20 in Cocoa's favor... Which means that Cocoa's space is much more distorted than the accessible decks.It seems like the Ship might have a good reason for keeping it closed off.
DECK 01 - FERN
As implied by the name, this environment is full of ferns. Nominally, it is temperate rainforest, and the highest decks reflect this best; the top decks are a variety of upright trees, These are primarily broadleaf trees - maples, oaks, and so forth - that leave large amounts of leaf litter, which is always at least a little bit damp. It could look like Earth's Pacific Northwest, if you somehow separated out the pines from that ecosystem and left everything else.Inside of the ship is functionally a jungle, damp and full of moss, mold, and mildew. Anywhere there is light, and even some places there isn't, massive plants have grown out of control, some of them large enough to have caused structural damage between rooms or floors. Beneath the canopy are various smaller species - small maples (some of them outright ornamental in size and shape), nettles, holly, and salal at mid height and various mosses and lichen along with the rare treasure of trillium and deer-tongue lilies at the bottom. Ivy climbs up to hang from ceilings and strangle whatever comes within its reach (sometimes literally). And there's ferns.
The further down you go, the more of it is just ferns.
There are more varieties of fern here than you've ever seen in your life (unless you're some kind of hyperspecialized fern researcher), and their fronds are hypnotic to look at. Literally - spend too long looking at any particular one and you're likely to get sucked in, trying to follow the natural form of the fractal to its end with your eyes until the rest of the world may as well not exist. But as long as you don't look at the deep ferns too closely (many of the ones in the upper levels are fine), they're not especially dangerous.
What's that? Oh, there's still strangling ivy on the ceiling? Well, then. That's no good at all.
Aside from the risk of getting strangled by the ivy because you stared at them too long, the ferns also just... move. Their fronds are only rarely motionless - most often, they rustle like a breeze only they can feel is flowing through the halls. On rare occasions, you may see something that's more like a large invisible shape attempting to carve a path through the fractal undergrowth. But that's probably nothing to worry about.
Aside from its thick plant cover, Fern Deck is one of the most dimensionally stable of the decks, and typically the deck on which characters arrive. The systems of the Ship, however, are only partially functional on this deck; in particular, much of the deck is not lit, due to the addition of artificial lighting causing explosive growth among the plants there.
DECK 10 - ZINNIA - Access Restricted
NOTE: Characters do not have regular access to Zinnia deck. Access was granted for a brief period during the Biting Thorns event, and the deck information is included below for easier player reference and access.In comparison to other floors characters have had access to so far, Zinnia is sterile and cold, both literally and figuratively. For the first time, characters will see the Ship with no signs of plant growth - even Zinnia's top decks are free of vegetation. Instead, these upper decks are full of complicated-looking instruments that stick up from the deck, measuring the wind and other atmospheric data, and the large square blocks of air conditioning and refrigeration heat sinks. There is evidence of wear from the centuries of rain and storms, and some of the weather instruments have pieces broken off, but there is nothing organic to be found up here.
Below the top deck, the floors between 1 and 10 are all much the same - chilly, dimly lit, and almost supernaturally clean. The smell of cleaning chemicals lingers in the nose, along with the smell of preservatives, and the energy matches. Characters with empathy powers will find it difficult to get comfortable on sterile Zinnia, with an almost oppressive unwelcoming feeling and a much stronger feeling of grief and failure than the rest of the Ship. The halls themselves are dark, except for lights that turn on in the immediate area of characters and follow them around as they move through the halls. All the doors through the hallways are sealed closed, and though they open at the approach of any character, it's with a wave of cold air from the chilled interior.
The inside of the suites on Zinnia no longer at all resemble their original purpose as vacation lodging - all furnishings and most interior walls have been removed, and although the doors at the far end of the suites with balconies still exist, they're covered and sealed such that not even light can get through them. This much is obvious, because any given suite on Zinnia will remain completely dark until you actually step inside, at which point low, cold white lights will kick in, just enough to see clearly once your eyes have adjusted.
Every suite on Zinnia is filled with rows and rows of shelves, containing rows and rows of carefully maintained samples in test tubes and similar containers. The labels are frequently faded to the point of illegibility, but the samples contained in the tubes are clear enough: insects, small animals, feathers, more insects, entire small birds, fur scraps and teeth, and other tissue samples from larger animals fill rows and rows and rows of the ship's halls, in almost uncountable quantities. Both wet and dry preservation methods are used, and though there are no individual specimens larger than about a fist, it's clear that the researchers who once worked and lived aboard the ship were as thorough as they possibly could be with the time they were given.
After all, any specimen they failed to acquire, any that they did not preserve properly, was destined to disappear entirely.
Specimens appear to be ordered based upon environment - as indicated by the large painted signage on the walls on every floor, which includes a floor number and the name of a plant used as an indicative descriptor. 01 Fern will of course be familiar to the Ship's current passengers, but the tantalizing hints implied by floors such as 08 Orchid (full of tropical birds, insects, and other rainforest animals), 02 Pine (full of plain-colored and white creatures that seem to have inhabited Arctic or other extremely cold climates), or 09 Yucca (full of small and sharp desert animals) are there for those who keep their eyes peeled while investigating this dimension's decks.
The clean state of Zinnia also allows characters access to something they have yet to see - the three bottom floors of the ship, which on both Fern and the agricultural decks are full of plant debris and flood damage. Descending the elevators to these floors will offer characters access to more converted suites on decks 11 and 12, their windows and balconies once more sealed off, but deck 13 is open.
Indeed. deck 13 is very open. There are no walls on this deck - which is smaller than the main decks, tucked back towards the back of the ship, like the opposite of the residential floors above. Only sterile furnishings separate characters from the view from the glass walls that surround this deck, and even patches of the floor are large glass panels, allowing you to look directly down at the ground below.
When the ship was flying regularly, it must have been quite the attraction. Unfortunately, as it is now, the view out these windows is only a slightly closer view of the now-familiar wasteland beyond the ship, interrupted by the motion of the eight metal legs that now propel it. Looking down through the floor view panels provides characters with no breathtaking views of the distant ground, but only the blurry sight of the ground rushing by as the Ship continues its endless mission.
DECK ?? - RUE - Access Denied
NOTE: Characters do not have regular access to Rue deck. Characters woke up there during the Ripple and Warp Fourth wall event, and the deck information is included below for easier player reference and access.Rue deck is restricted access at all times. Characters cannot access this deck unless specifically noted in event or other mod posts; the Ship will not respond to requests to access this deck. In addition, Rue is a clean deck; there is no evidence of the Growth here.
Indeed, there is very little evidence of life on Rue at all, and it is very well-polished in addition to being clean. The floors are shiny enough to be reflective, even with the dim lighting (the lights are only rarely on at full power on Rue), but they're hardly the shiniest thing around. All of the mirrors missing from the other decks - the ones you don't find in bathrooms and so forth - are here, and then some. Sometimes entire walls are mirrors, the way you would find in a dance studio, and a good portion of the hard furniture is also mirrored surfaces. Good luck making your way around Rue's equivalent of a cafeteria without getting vertigo or bonking into anything.
Many of the mirrors, though hardly all, have plain white bedsheets thrown over them, though unfortunately there's little to be done when it comes to the mirrors that are literally walls. This is due to the hazard of Rue: That your reflection, possibly warped, possibly a you of the past or future, but despite everything still you, will step out of a mirror and attempt to drag you back where it came from.
Or at least, that's what happened the last time characters were on this deck, and that's why it's restricted access. Indeed, the Ship has not even added Rue to the list of options available marked on the elevator, so characters have, at present, no idea which number even corresponds to it.
BEYOND THE SHIP
Characters are confined to the ship - while there are areas "outside" the ship that are accessible, such as cabin balconies and the upper decks, all of these areas are insulated from the outside by a sort of bubble of an unknown material. The bubble is flexible and just shy of transparent, letting in light and allowing a mostly clear, though slightly white-tinted view of what lies beyond the ship. It responds to attempts to break it reflectively - physical attacks cause the bubble to bounce back as much force as it was struck with, and anything else bounces back as though reflected by a mirror. Gentle touch, however, can manipulate the shape of the bubble; its texture is vaguely like attempting to push downwards on particularly thick jello. (It's basically like this.)
Despite this, those standing on balconies or the upper decks will feel the wind through their hair, the bubble only reducing the force of the wind to a light breeze. The bubble partially protects characters from precipitation - rain and snowfall are lessened compared to the outside, but you'll still get soaked through if you go out in a rainstorm and frosty if you go out in a snowstorm. (You might not want to try your luck with lightning.) Some storms will have particular effects on specific areas of the ship, which will be detailed in information posts at that time.
Outside the ship, the scenery is harsh. Terming this wasteland a desert would imply a wider variety of life than exists beyond its borders. Though there are snow-capped mountains visible at times in the distance, and storms are at least somewhat likely to drop water over the ship, the only point of life is what the ship is carrying. There is no green - or the purple common to the ship's mutant plantlife - within sight; the whole stretch of the horizon is in reddish browns in the day and darkened shapes of blue-black in the night.
Usually, the areas the ship passes through are dry and heaped with dunes of sand and dust, speckled with cliffsides and stone worn smooth by the sandstorms. Occasionally, there is a crevasse that the ship must ford its way across - at the bottoms of these, the ripples of rivers can be seen, where they have long since worn their way to the bottom. Equally uncommon are lakes that glitter in the sun, with no apparent source to fill them. Neither body of water, however, shows the slightest hint of being an oasis in this empty world.
The skies over the ship tend to remain clear outside of the storms that come rolling through seemingly at random - there are few clouds except those that hang low over the mountains, and the ones that can be seen are scattered and only rarely block out the sun to any degree. At night, the stars are visible to an extent that characters who grew up with light pollution will be in awe of; although the ship has a few running lights, all of them are reddish and point downwards to avoid interfering with the view. A hoop of galactic river circles the planet at about a 40 degree angle to the path of the sun.
There are no familiar constellations visible at night; all characters who are familiar with the skies of their homes will find themselves equally at a loss to recognize anything. Those who are familiar with stellar navigation in general will be able to place that the ship is in the northern equatorial region, the circling-point of the stars low in the northern sky as it travels generally eastward. Beyond this, however, characters will find it difficult to make a comprehensible study of the heavens, as many of the stars move from night to night. Perhaps those are not stars at all, but planets or satellites reflecting sunlight?
Most obvious in the night sky, however, is the moon. Although it was at one time similar to the moon of Earth and many other planets, at some point in relatively recent geologic history, something massive impacted it on one side. Debris circles the moon, primarily on the side with the crater, which is visible at an angle from the surface of the planet below. Like Earth's moon, it is tidally locked, and only shows one face to the planet, with the crater on the waning-light left side, but there is some amount of wobble to its axis as it spins that causes it to appear at different angles over its phase period (longer than Earth's moon at 37 days), the north pole pointing anywhere from 12 to 3 o'clock and back again.
EXPLORATIONS
Characters usually have free rein to explore the ship, outside of certain areas that are sealed off for ship functions. However, due to the potential danger, going into the deeper sections of below-decks can require preparation, both in-character and out-of-character, so that the mods can adequately prepare information on what your characters find in the course of their explorations. In order to keep the number of these explorations workable for the mod team, we ask that players limit themselves to one active exploration at a time (per players) and three concurrent explorations total across the game.
Accordingly, if your characters are intending to go belowdecks, please fill out this form as a response to this post with the location in the comment header so that mods can give you the results of that exploration in a timely manner. Some explorations may not be fully played out due to sheer volume and mod time constraints, but we will do our best to get you at least an idea of what your characters find. A summary of the exploration's outcome will be posted in response to your comment when the exploration is either complete or has dragged out without real progress for more than two weeks.
PLEASE NOTE: Characters can die as a result of their investigations, especially in the more dangerous parts of the ship. They may also be injured, exposed to Growth and Whispering effects, or piss off the Ship in the process of their Exploration. However, Explorations are also one major method for getting information about the metaplot and the ability to eventually get out of here, and they can also provide characters with ample rewards of supplies that the Ship does not provide - including items from characters' home worlds.